Honoring and congratulating Champion of the Week, scientists Taku Kambayashi and Ruth Choa from the University of Pennsylvania's Biomedical Research Team, on their victory in the STAT Madness competition.

WHEREAS, The STAT Madness competition hosts teams of scientists around the country who present their biomedical findings based on the subject of their choice; and

WHEREAS, UPenn’s team was led by Taku Kambayashi, a pathology and laboratory medicine professor at UPenn’s School of Medicine, and he worked alongside Ruth Choa, a graduate student; and

WHEREAS, The results of Kambayashi and Choa’s experiment proved that a type of immune-system cells could successfully reduce mice’s blood glucose levels; and

WHEREAS, The team was even more surprised by additional results which showed that these immune-system cells could also significantly reduce the weight of obese mice after they lost 40% of their body weight in fat; and

WHEREAS, UPenn’s team competed against the University of California Davis’s team, whose project involved the study of psychedelics, and UPenn won after securing 71% of the votes; and

WHEREAS, Their study was interesting and quickly accepted by the community, which led scientists to wonder what this means for humans in the future since humans have similar characteristics and could possibly release fat in a similar fashion to that observed in the mice; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, That we hereby congratulate and honor the University of Pennsylvania scientists who competed in STAT Madness against 64 teams and won the first-place prize.

FURTHER RESOLVED, That an Engrossed copy be presented to Taku Kambayashi and Ruth Choa from the University of Pennsylvania, further evidencing the sincere admiration and respect of this legislative body.

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